Ms Danielle McLaughlin:

I will take up the question about approaching the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection on the HSE issue. Crosscare has been in contact with the Department quite regularly. The first presentation we attended was with the interdepartmental committee chaired by the Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora. There are representatives from each Department at that. It was raised at that early stage. We produced our report, entitled A Hundred Thousand Welcomes? in May this year. It highlights a number of cases and research we conducted. It was forwarded to the Minister and the Department. To date, we have not been able to get a meeting. We are hopeful we will meet the principal officer soon under a response to the letter from the Minister recently. It is a matter that we are concerned is growing again because staff are losing that training, or it is not being renewed as often as it should be with new staff, or staff are being moved around. There is a specific clause that refers to returning migrants. That has not been implemented in cases we have taken to the appeals office that have been overturned. It has been very inconsistent. It is a complicated piece of policy that is difficult to determine. Five factors are taken into consideration but people in vulnerable situations or difficult circumstances often do not have all the required documents. In the meantime they are left destitute and they may have other difficult circumstances to deal with, particularly homelessness.

Our concern is the delay with the processing times. That is further hampered by backlogs in the appeals office. We are looking more for consistency in the overall implementation of the habitual residence condition, HRC, and improvement in the information that is being provided to customers of the Department, whether online, by letter, in person or through leaflets available in the offices. We emphasise that people who are worried about their decision to return to Ireland should have more user-friendly information available. The website is directed at deciding officers so it is difficult to read and understand. There is very little information about which specific documents are required. We have pointed out a number of these issues to the Minister and we are hoping to get some progress on that. We are interested in the committee also.